East Carbon officials vote to evict company from building

During the last East Carbon City Council meeting, the decision was made to evict renters at the bicentennial building located in the small town.

East Carbon Mayor Dale Andrews brought up the idea of eviction after several failed attempts to contact Universal Merchant Services, the company renting the office space.

The mayor asked the council for permission to send a letter and a 30-day notice to vacate the property to the company.

After being informed that the renters have gone more than a year without paying rent to the city for the use of the office space within the building, all members of the council were in favor of sending the 30-day vacancy notice to the company.

Universal Merchant Services will have until July 28 to vacate the premises, at which point a new party may be allowed to rent the office space.

The possibility of moving the local job service group to that office space was also discussed.

Finding more room for other offices housed at the East Carbon City Hall has been a problem the council has been trying to rectify for a while.

The idea of moving the job service group to a new location would allow East Carbon City employees to spread out into the office space currently being used by job service.

Addresssing an unrelated matter at the June 28 meeting, the officials discussed adding automatic sprinklers to the lawns around the East Carbon City Hall.

East Carbon councilmember Dave Maggio brought up the idea during the meeting on Tuesday.

He explained to the council that he believed the total cost of the project would be less than $300. This might save money for the city, who currently pays someone to go turn each sprinkler on and off.

Maggio also explained that there was power available for the automatic sprinklers and it would be an easy task to install the new system.

Other members of the council brought up the possibility of doing the same to the park in the future.

The park project would have to be completed at a higher cost to the city due to the amount of lawn to be watered.

After receiving support for the endeavor by other members of the council, Maggio made a motion to allow the sprinkler system to be installed at city hall, and possibly doing the same for the park in the future. The motion was seconded by Darlene Kuhns and passed unanimously by the council.

Also brought up during the meeting was the problem with campers at the park in Columbia that have been using the park facilities for several days. It was mentioned by Mayor Andrews that the campers have been staying in tents at the park since last Thursday.

A resident of Columbia brought up the situation, explaining that she had tried to use the park for a picnic but was unable due to the amount of space being used by the campers. She informed the council that the campers made it impossible for any Columbia residents to use the park for any activities. When confronted about using the park, the campers used the excuse that they had received permission from the mayor to stay there.

"They can't do that," said Maggio about the Columbia park campers. "That park doesn't belong to some individual with a tent."

An ordinance is currently in place for the park, stating that it is closed from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. to anyone wanting to use it unless given permission by the mayor or police chief. The mayor expressed his concern for the problem and stated that the city would enforce the ordinance and ask the campers to move.

Since the park is not made for camping, there are no utilities to speak of that campers could be using while staying there.

The concerned resident asked the mayor if the campers could be moved in time for the holiday weekend so residents could use the parks for picnics. Andrews responded by saying "we'll have them out tomorrow."

The possibility of ordering "no overnight camping" signs was also discussed by Andrews and the city council. It was thought that the signs could possibly prevent this occurrence from happening again.